Please Stop Telling People That If . . .

. . . they would just “ask Jesus into their heart,” they would be saved. Don’t miss-hear me. I am all for people being saved. There is joy in heaven over just one sinner “who repents” (Luke 15:7). Did you catch that? There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.

Paul Washer says that the greatest heresy in the American protestant and evangelical church today is the widely preached idea that “if you ask Jesus into your heart, he actually enters in.” That might be a bit of an overstatement. I say might because I feel the burden that Washer has for the gospel of Jesus Christ which no where calls anyone to “ask Jesus into their heart” nor does it ever ground salvation on praying a prayer.

The message Jesus preached was this: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15, cf. Matt. 4:17). John the Baptist’s message was similar, “repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). Peter preached repentance at Pentecost and Paul called all of those he preached to on his missionary journeys “to repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with repentance” (Acts 2:38, 26:20).

My issue with the “just ask Jesus into your heart” language is that at best it isn’t biblical and at worst it leads to false conversions.

You may think I am being harsh. You may be thinking, “isn’t it true that the Holy Spirit dwells within us as believers and so in a sense, Jesus dwells in our hearts?” Yes that is true, but the Holy Spirit dwells in the hearts of believers. Why would we go around telling those who are slaves of sin that all they need to do to be saved is invite Jesus into their hearts? That is easy to do, but it’s not biblical nor is it the gospel that the Jesus and the Apostles preached.

You might also be thinking if we preach repentance instead, aren’t we making repentance a work in and of itself? While it is possible to preach repentance such that we make it the key to salvation, that is not how we should preach. True repentance is a change of the mind and will. The Bible tells us that we are slaves to sin (Rom. 6:15-22) and dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1). Dead men don’t will themselves back to life! In fact the Bible tells us that the man living apart from Christ “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 1:14). Thus repentance is ultimately a supernatural work of almighty God to make dead men alive and to change men’s hearts such that they begin to love what they once hated and hate what they once loved (Rom. 7:9-25). Repentance is not a human work meriting God’s favor but a divine supernatural one that God works out in the hearts of sinners who have turned away from him.

So here is my suggestion: instead of telling people to ask Jesus into their hearts, tell them to repent and believe. And instead of asking whether people have ever prayed to ask Jesus into their hearts, ask them if God has done such a supernatural work in their hearts that they love God and the things of God and now hate sin and the things of the flesh. Ask them if God is making their dead heart alive to the greatest joy of all, the joy of knowing Christ and making Him known!

If there is one thing we are passionate about here at EE, it is the gospel of Jesus Christ, so if this post offends you please let me know why. My hope is merely to help people preach the gospel faithfully and biblically–the way Jesus and the Apostles did.

Anyone can pray a prayer, but it takes the power of the Holy Spirit to bring dead men to life.

14 Responses

Thanks for the post. I am a door-knocking soulwinner, preaching in prisons and wherever else I can, and I too have found that the “Romans Road” plan of salvation can also seem a bit flimsy when we are not pointing people in the direction of repentance as well.

While I would never say, “Ask Jesus now to come into your heart,” or “Put your hand on this TV screen,” I do know some people who have come to Christ through those means — probably because at some point later they repented.

For me, I had few Victories in Jesus upon salvation, but at some point (I am not sure when this happened, either), I truly began to withdraw my allegiance from the World to that of the Kingdom of Christ. The gospel got me there, and keeps me there too — and that’s not such an easy nugget to teach!

I could not agree with you more on that point. We end up with way to many Christian-lites instead of Christians who are lights because they are not made disciples first and learn who Jesus is, why He died and have some sense of brokenness and need for repentance before taking the next step. But, let’s not just stop there. Again, nowhere in the Bible does it say “pray the sinners prayer”. Where does He perform the work (not us) of the circumscision on our hearts to free us from the flesh of the sin? There are lots of verses on this one. Here’s a good start.

Colossians 2:8-12
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

Well said! I too am concerned that people may pray “the magic prayer” without any real repentance. Jesus’ Great Commission calls upon us to make disciples, not merely converts. And how can anyone be a disciple without genuinely repenting? I fear that our churches have many members and few disciples. I agree that we can’t work our way to salvation, but Paul’s words at the end of 1 Corinthians 9 indicate that he thought it appropriate for a Christian to work like an Olympian in training. Somehow we need to balance resting in God’s grace and striving to be more like Jesus.

Thanks for your comments. I was encouraged to see the response this short article has gotten. Praise God that there are others on the blogosphere who are sensing the danger of equaling “ask Jesus into your heart” with genuine conversion.”

I have some thoughts I’d like to share in response to your comments, I will post them later (when I am not on the clock at work!), especially in response to bshelly and Brother Pete.

I also wanted to make a disclaimer. I can see how someone might read my article here and think “hey I should go tell my pastor what for,” especially if you are getting this type of preaching every week. The disclaimer is this, whatever you say to your pastor, say in love and in conviction for the glory of God and not just to be right. Be very careful how you address these issues with your pastor if he preaches this way. I encourage you to address this issue in your church if you are being preached to this way but just make sure you do so out of love.

If you think ‘stop telling people to ask Jesus to come into their heart’ is a bit like a ‘shot heard round the world,’ you just may be right. When put that way, it is amazing the ignorance that is out there. I do not intend this to be a rant, but I want to say a few things that I regularly see or hear about said in our pulpits. In fact, I heard this one in chapel at WBU today . . . after a winsome and passionate lecture on the Missio Dei, the speaker read 2 Pet. 1:10 and basically referred to ‘calling’ in that verse in order to add authority to his plea for students to obey a call to plant churches and proclaim the gospel to people who have no gospel witness in their region. In this case, he was right to say what he said, but 2 Pet. 1:10 has absolutely nothing to do with a calling to plant churches. Peter is counseling his readers to make sure they are saved in v. 10 (see 2 Pet. 1:3-11 for context) by taking notice of their diligence to be fruitful for Christ.

Anyway, I say that to help paint a picture of what is going on in our churches, especially with regard to the plea for sinners to repent of their sins and believe in God’s promises for us in Jesus Christ. Though there is no verse in the Bible exhorting us to ‘invite Jesus into our hearts because he is standing at the door of our hearts politely knocking,’ nearly every Mom and Pop Baptist you meet believes that is the best way to preach the gospel ‘call.’ I include a gospel ‘call’ with the proclamation of the gospel because for every sinner who hears the gospel proclaimed, if there is not a calling to believe included, it will leave them wondering, ‘what must I do to be saved?’. It is really simple, in fact, and can biblically be said several different ways. ‘Ask Jesus into your heart’ is not one of those biblical calls. In fact, unless they have been a church goer for years or are fairly familiar with our jargon, ‘ask Jesus into your heart’ won’t make any sense to them. Believe. Bank your hope for salvation and forgiveness in all that God promises to be for us in Jesus Christ (i.e. have faith). Repent of your sins . . . turn your back to them (cf. Acts 3:19). Be reconciled to God (cf. 2 Cor. 5:20). Those are biblical expressions of the gospel ‘call,’ and they will need little further explanation after you tell the gospel. Make no mistake, there is nothing wrong with exhorting and pleading with a sinner to repent, believe in Jesus, and be reconciled to God. 2 Cor. 5:20 implores us to be reconciled to God! But, keep in mind always, a prayer or other means of expressing faith is not what saves a person. It is by the supernatural effectual call and grace of God that we may be saved.

So what do I think is a good way to exhort sinners to believe the gospel? Try something like this:

Are you in Christ today? Are you among those for whom the ransom was paid? If you are hearing the gospel proclaimed to you as you are reading this loud and clear like a ringing bell, answer the call. Believe and be saved. Be reconciled to God through faith in all the promises God is for us in Jesus Christ.

A big reason why we take issue with something like ‘ask Jesus into your heart’ or other evangelism tactics that are actually worse is the fact that we are passionate about the glory of God in the gospel. Confusing jargon that does not have a biblical foundation is not necessary. ‘Repent and believe’ make better sense and are biblical expressions of the gospel ‘call.’ But enough about that. I would urge even greater caution with manipulative evangelism tactics. What do I mean by that? I and the others at EE believe salvation is offered, applied, and given by God alone according to his election, not manipulative tactics or fancy preaching. We are called to preach the gospel. We do not save people. God does. Therefore, any tactic that is manipulative or sly or given in a manner to force or guarantee results is ultimately an attempt to rob God of the glory he deserves when a sinner is saved. It is laughable to think that we can produce converts. It is God who saves, who converts, who by his sovereign grace applies the ransom on our behalf for our redemption. He gives his children to the Son and the Son keeps them forever. We on the other hand, are simply tools in the hands of God called to obey Christ’s commission to go and tell the gospel and make disciples throughout the earth. We don’t need Finney’s evangelism and proposed methods for creating a revival. They don’t ultimately work anyway. Revivals are granted by the working of God, not massive gatherings to listen to Billy Graham preach. If we long for revival, we should pray for one in our church, not plan one and wonder later why nothing happened. We don’t need an anxious seat or long drawn out invitations. We only need to preach the gospel and exhort those who hear and understand it to repent of their sins and bank their hopes in Jesus Christ. I pray this comment is helpful. Please don’t be like Billy Sunday and D.L. Moody who have basically rejected any concern for their assault on biblical preaching of the gospel by saying, “It does not matter how we bring them to God, so long as we bring them.”

I know people love Billy Graham, and I love his heart for the gospel also. But just as Finney did, Graham has lamented that many (I would suggest ‘most’) of those who ‘asked Jesus in their heart’ at his big ‘revivals’ were not genuine. Do you know what that really means? It means they were goats, not sheep. But many believe they are saved because they made a ‘decision for Christ,’ checked it off, and never actually consider they were manipulated and duped because some preacher offered them ‘fire insurance’ rather than preached the gospel as the Bible puts it forward . . . that God overcomes our resistance to him through the preaching of the gospel so that we willingly and happily repent and believe. These problems that I mentioned are not fixed by follow-up either. It is fixed by proclaiming the gospel as the Bible tells it in all its different expressions and also exhorting people who hear it and understand it to repent and believe in the manner the Bible expresses it. Hopefully, this and Drew’s post will challenge you to think biblically when telling the gospel to your friends, co-workers, church, or whoever you meet. Thankfully, and I will say this about my own poor gospel-telling a few years ago, God is still able to overcome our mistakes when telling the gospel and save a person. But that offers no excuse for still doing it wrong.

Well said. One point however if you will. You refer to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost to say that he did not say, “ask Jesus into your heart.” Oddly enough, neither did he say, “repent and believe.” They believed him, that’s why they were “pierced to the heart”. What they wanted to know was an answer to, “what shall we do?” To which Peter plainly replied… “Repent and each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins;” Interesting.

Brother Pete, thanks for stopping by. I would say this in response, though people who have heard “just ask Jesus into your heart” may be saved, it is not their asking him to enter in that saves them. What saves us is the supernatural work of God to bring faith and repentance to our dead hearts. There are people who asked Jesus to enter in that are saved because at some point the Lord worked out true Jesus abiding faith and sin-hating repentance in their hearts! It is God who saves not prayers or invitations to Jesus to enter our hearts. I am not saying that you were saying that, just thought I would clarify my intention in my post. Again, thanks for dropping by.

bshelly, thanks for your comments and your clarifications! Glad to have you in on this conversation.

I am going to write another post, similar to this one on conversion addressing the unbiblical idea often thrown around that you just pray “the sinner’s prayer” you will be saved. I don’t think its unbiblical to pray the content of the sinners prayer, but prayers don’t save us, Jesus does by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. Look for that post sometime early next week!

If the best response we can suggest to the gospel we’ve just preached is that the the hearer “ask Jesus into their heart,” we haven’t preached the gospel. When’s the last time our hearers were “pierced to the heart” by the gospel?

“My issue with the “just ask Jesus into your heart” language is that at best it isn’t biblical and at worst it leads to false conversions.”

i like that comment. very well said, and true. Also, i understand how you were saying Paul washer’s comments might be a bit of an overstatement, however when i met and spoke with him and he shared with me the different places he’s been and heard this “simple” gospel message, he was disgusted, so i can also see why he would say such a heavy statement (greatest heresy in the world…).

[…] they die. Secondly, when people ask how they may be saved, the are told to repent (2:38). As I have previously argued, John the Baptist preached repentance, Jesus preached repentance, and the Apostles preached […]